Firearms, such as pistols, are generally used with a magazine assembly to feed cartridges to the weapon. The magazines generally have a housing to contain and guide the cartridges, and a follower assembly having a spring to maintain loaded cartridges biased towards an exit of the magazine. Opposing the exit is generally a removable floorplate, to allow disassembly of the magazine for repair or cleaning.
In the past, magazines were generally made of metal. However, attempts to use polymeric housings have led to undesirable performance of the magazines.
One non-limiting example of the problems associated with polymeric housings involves the properties of the polymer itself. Specifically, polymeric materials exhibit creep at room temperature or human-survivable weather temperatures, where the magazine will usually be stored. Creep in polymeric firearm magazines is particularly exacerbated at the feed lips of the magazines, because the feed lips are under constant stress from the follower, spring assembly, and cartridges pressing against the feed lips. Even when the magazine is unloaded and in storage, the feed lips experience a constant stress. This constant stress causes the gap between the feed lips in a polymeric magazine to widen over time, resulting in a magazine that does not properly constrain the cartridges and/or feed reliably, if at all.
To overcome this known problem, past solutions have involved using a metallic lining or fully metallic housing or feed lips to minimize the effects of creep. However, it remains desirable to provide a magazine assembly without any of these metallic portions while still maintaining or even improving reliability.
In another non-limiting example, currently-available firearm magazines often require a special-purpose tool for disassembly. The special-purpose tool is easily lost or otherwise not available to the user when needed.
In still another non-limiting example, the spring in currently available firearm magazines may be over-compressed if the magazine is loaded beyond the stated capacity, leading to exacerbated loss of the spring constant and/or the spring folding over itself, requiring disassembly of the magazine, which is in itself problematic as described above. Spring over-compression is a relatively common problem, and difficult to overcome, because the springs must be designed to fit the interior of the magazine housing, a less-than-optimal spring shape, and apply a spring force in a narrow desired range to maintain optimal feeding of the cartridges.
In still another non-limiting example, the use of polymeric housings has been problematic because the polymeric housing is preferably manufactured with a sufficient interference between the housing and firearm to maintain engagement. Yet, this interference also may interfere with movement of the trigger bar on the weapon and/or prevent the magazine from dropping properly.
In still another non-limiting example, when loading currently-available magazines by hand, the user must manually align a rim of a cartridge being loaded with a case of a previously-loaded cartridge, and apply significant force to the cartridge being loaded in a generally downward direction (e.g., into the magazine), to overcome the follower spring force and insert the new cartridge. That is, the user must effectively push two cylinders together (the cartridge casings), or, put another way, constrain three-dimensional positioning and motion of the cartridge while attempting to apply a concentrated force in the direction of travel of the cartridge. Because of this, the user is prone to causing the cartridge being loaded to slip off, leading to loss of cartridges and/or increased loading times.
Although present devices and methods are functional, they are not sufficiently efficient or otherwise satisfactory. Accordingly, a system and method are needed to address some of the shortfalls of present technology and to provide other new and innovative features.